


Infinity for a Moment

by 12thofNever



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), second doctor - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Male Friendship, Male Slash, Platonic Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 05:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4816793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/12thofNever/pseuds/12thofNever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On a small and beautiful planet, Jamie finds the Doctor is more relaxed than usual. Jamie makes a spontaneous decision. The Doctor reveals a ghost from the past and sees what may be a ghost of the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Infinity for a Moment

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place immediately after the events of Birthsong. The boys haven't felt the need to leave this idyllic little planet yet. And there's a mysterious cameo.

         "Ye picked a good planet this time. I like this one. Ye had me worried when ye mentioned the sharp little lizard teeth and all, but that all worked out all right."  
    The Doctor's response to Jamie's observations was another sigh.  And another. Every couple of minutes and there it was again, enough sighing to inflate a bagpipe.  
    "Are ye even listenin'? Aw, bloody hell. I'll just shut up then."  
    The sky was lavender like this world's hazy sun, a milky disc in the sky of golden-rose clouds which hovered above meadows of jade green and blossoming silvery trees.  
    The pair had just witnessed the hatching clutch of tiny, melodious winged reptilians that Jamie kept referring to as "wee dragons", despite the Doctor assuring him that proper fairy tale dragons didn't exist. "Oh, aye, my thoughts on that are: if it looks like a dragon, it is a dragon, " Jamie had stubbornly insisted. The Doctor decided to let him call them dragons after that, in order to keep the tenuous peace.  
    They could still hear the dragons' singing as the newborn creatures sought nectar from the meadows of flowers and silver tree blossoms. "I thought you said they had sharp teeth, " Jamie grumbled. "They're like bumblebees! Dragon bumblebees. And bumblebees don't have teeth."  
    "Not on your world, " the Doctor had lectured patiently. "These little fellows have predators and they need the teeth for self-defense."  
    "Oh, aye." Jamie then had looked startled. "Predators? Ye mean bigger things with teeth? They're here too?" He had begun to look wildly about himself in alarm. The Doctor had just shaken his head and rolled his eyes.  
    "Not teeth-- tentacles. Their enemies have tentacles."  
    Well, Jamie, you silly boy.  
    "Oh, well... that's all right then..." Jamie had begrudged this, then changed his mind. "No, it isn't! Tentacles! Like stingers! Doctor, we need to get back in the TARDIS before we get stung by octopus-monsters."      
    "Jamie, I can assure you there are no octopus-monsters on this planet. At least none that I've personally seen. And octopi do not have stingers. Giant jellyfish do, however."  
    "Aw, hell, Doctor. Let's get outta here." Jamie pulled at the sleeve of his shabby black coat. "I don't fancy gettin' wrapped in jellyfish stingers."      
    "It actually doesn't hurt. I've had it happen to me several times on visits here and it actually only tickled a bit. And felt quite pleasant." The Doctor looked to the side, chuckling over some warm and happy nostalgic moment of being wrapped in jellyfish stingers.  
     Jamie just stared at him. "No. No. We're leavin' and yer a wee weird little chappie. So this has happened before, eh? And you still keep comin' back for the dragon songs."  
    The Doctor had looked offended. "Have an open mind, Jamie, for goodness sake! This is one of the safest places I could ever hope to take you!" He pouted and stamped his foot. "And I am not weird. Eccentric, perhaps. But most geniuses are misunderstood, so... there."  
    Jamie sighed. "We really should go."  
    The Doctor had then looked up at him with big hurt eyes, which were growing moist. "You can't be so eager to leave this beautiful place, Jamie. I...I wanted to show it to you especially." He began winding and unwinding his fingers, his small mouth turned upside-down in disappointment. "Perhaps we can just sit down for a little bit and enjoy the scenery. And this world is indeed such a thing of loveliness, is it not, Jamie?"  
    Jamie had to agree. This little planet looked like something out of a dream of a perpetual twilit faerie realm. The fragrances of all the blooms, the humming low song of the little blue dragon-bees only added to its ethereal and sensory appeal. "Oh, I suppose it couldn't hurt," he shrugged.  
    The Doctor's face lit up with pure joy and he grinned, excitedly taking Jamie's hand and pulling him happily to the base of one of the elegant silvery trees. "Let's sit here and just... sit here, " he sighed. And this was only the start of all the sighing to come.  
      
    The dragon-bees had transparent wings with intricate feather patterns which made them look as if they were made from filigree. The creatures' song was sometimes reminiscent of quivering bowstrings on violins, sometimes deep as cellos, and sometimes like sonorous chanting choruses. It was soothing and constant as the beasties busied themselves collecting nectar from the tree's blossoms over their heads.  It seemed to be soothing to the Doctor, for certain, for he was lying with his head in Jamie's lap while Jamie lovingly stroked the thick black hair.  
    They lounged against the trunk of the silver tree that the Doctor had said reminded him of his home, wherever that was. Somewhere far beyond Jamie's imagination, and it would not have surprised him in the least if the Doctor himself was an enchanted faerie elf who had somehow escaped the realms of his fellow Fey Folk. It was more believable to Jamie than Cybermen and Daleks and Ice Warriors... and stinging giant jellyfish.       
    Once more, he looked about them, searching for potential dangers. He always had to be on his guard when it came to the Doctor, since the Doctor, for all his self-proclaimed genius, often underestimated actual perils.  
    But everything remained tranquil, and Jamie ran his fingers through the locks of his friend's lush black mane, allowing himself to relax his vigilance and just enjoy the beauty.       
    "I often come here for its serenity," whispered the Doctor, his large blue eyes at half-mast. "My mind has a tendency to race endlessly in circles and I need to come to a place like this to slow it down. To regain my equilibrium."  
    And there were more sighs as Jamie kneaded his scalp. The Doctor closed his eyes and nearly purred like a contented cat. "At this moment, Jamie, I feel completely at peace," he said in a dreamy whisper.  
    Jamie could not help but love seeing his friend so very still, so languid and content. The pixieish nature of the little man often made for a whirling bundle of frenetic energy that rarely shut down.  Lately, it was these gentle moments Jamie longed for most: no running, no monsters, no fear that you had seen the last of your best friend. He was right here, sighing, his soft hair sliding between your fingers. Jamie decided then he might never want to leave this little planet under the lavender sun after all, even with the ridiculous threat of giant jellyfish tentacles. No, not when there were moments like this, when he could see his Doctor dissolve at his side so far from the safety of the TARDIS, his home.  
    The trees were shedding their silver petals and the blossoms fell like a cottony snow over them and the rest of the flowered meadow. There was a scent to the air that reminded Jamie of green apples.  
    The Doctor reached for Jamie's hand and clasped it to his breast in both of his. Jamie snuggled a bit closer, sensing his friend's need for just a little more intimacy. The Doctor pulled Jamie's arm around him like a blanket. There came another long blissful sigh.  
    "I feel as if I could melt into the ground," murmured the Doctor.              
    "Aye, and what good would that do me? Ye turn yerself into a puddle of goo and I'll just have to get a bucket and slop ye back into it with a shovel and take ye back to the TARDIS. How else would we get out of here? No, Doctor, no meltin' away while I'm here."  
    The Doctor chucked softly, his hair still tousled against Jamie's kilt. "Oh Jamie, Jamie. I could never go anywhere without you. Where would I be? The TARDIS would... the TARDIS..."  
    Jamie sensed an immediate change in the Doctor's mood when his friend's words began to falter.  
    The Doctor abruptly sat up, brushing himself off, staring grimly straight ahead.  "Foolishness," he muttered then, crawling away from Jamie on his hands and knees.  
    "Foolishness? For crying out loud, Doctor!" Jamie stood up, just as the Doctor sat roughly down, turning his back to him. The young Highlander was wounded by this  sudden rejection.  "Ye were just about to fall asleep in my lap and that's a good thing, I say. Ye never seem to sleep and you're the one who wants to regain yer ... whadda-yer-call-it... endominium."      
    "Equilibrium, " the Doctor mumbled, still not facing him. He drew his knees to his chest and wrapped his arms tightly about them. Bits of fallen blossoms still clung to strands of his hair and Jamie desperately wanted to go and brush them away, as well as sink his fingers back into that wonderful mane again.  
    "Doctor? What's wrong?"  
    But he knew. The mind that raced in frenetic circles through time itself, had retreated to the past. And the Doctor had remembered something that had caused sorrow. Their old traveling companion Victoria had once told Jamie that the Doctor had comforted her by telling her that loved ones in her past would sleep in her mind, as they did in his. Jamie suspected that someone sleeping in the Doctor's mind had just violently woken up.  
    The Doctor's antidote to despair was always to race back to the sanctuary of the TARDIS and take it somewhere, anywhere, usually while he busied himself trying to repair whatever it was that made his time machine so fickle about being in... well, there was no better way to put it: the right place at the right time. He would find the little scientist fretting under the console, entangled with wires and tubes he claimed to know what to do with. Or he would be scrawling calculations in the Power Room, seated on the floor and surrounded by a sea of crumpled paper. "Noooooo," he would complain. "Not right, not right, not right..."  
    A day as tranquil as today had been an anomaly.      
    The Doctor had only mentioned his murky past to Jamie in the vaguest of words. He wanted to condemn it to history and bounce back and forth across the universe, through the time corridors, in order to forget... what exactly? His family? An event? A foe? Something else?  
    When the Doctor still did not answer him, Jamie decided to appeal to his friend's sense of play. He walked up beside the seated figure who had pulled himself into a tight stubborn ball. He punched him lightly in the shoulder. "Cheer up, Doctor."  
    He bent down and decided to  punch him again a little harder this time. "Aye, ye listenin'?"       
    This got a reaction: the Doctor lifted a reproachful black eyebrow and glared out of the corner of his eye at the young Scotsman.  Jamie whacked him a few times with the back of his elbow. "Aye? Aye?" Grinning, he stooped down and took the Doctor by the shoulders and began to shake him comically back and forth like a doll. "Aye, want to have a go at me? Ye do, ye know ye do."  
    The Doctor managed a rueful smile which then became sly. He suddenly lunged at Jamie's knees, knocking him to the ground. Winded, Jamie guffawed. The next thing he knew, Jamie was wrestling with the Doctor, the two rolling over and over in the grass, laughing. They grabbed fistfuls of flower petals and stems and began mashing them into each others' hair. They yanked at the other's legs to make each other trip. Both of them took turns rising and being thrown down by the other until the Doctor giggled and tried to run away and Jamie grabbed him by the coat-tails and flattened him out. He rolled on top of him, pinning him at the shoulders to the ground.  
    So it was at this moment that everything changed. It was so brief a moment as well: Jamie looked down into the wide, laughing eyes of his friend. These eyes were full of the universe, full of stars, full of galaxies and planets and places he would never, ever see even if he should live as long as the Doctor had. This was the moment, this fragment of time, this single grain of sand falling in an hourglass, in which Jamie knew he was deeply in love.  
    When the Doctor taught Jamie how to read, he had chosen works from a poet he had once actually known--a fellow by the name of Blake, Jamie remembered, whose poetry Jamie had actually liked because it made simple sense to him. It painted pictures in his mind when the Doctor read it aloud. One poem the Doctor taught him mentioned seeing heaven in a wildflower and holding infinity in the palm of his hand.  
    Here then was his wildflower and here then was infinity in two beloved blue eyes.  
    Jamie kissed the Doctor full on the lips.  
  
    The Doctor did not pull away. He closed his eyes and allowed it. However, when Jamie pulled back, he saw the turmoil in his beloved's face. The Doctor was no longer laughing. Instead, he seemed on the verge of tears.  
    "No, Jamie," he muttered, rolling awkwardly away. "No, no, no, no." This reprimand seemed not to be directed not at Jamie but rather at himself. He stood up, brushing crushed grass and flower petals from his baggy clothes. "Musn't. Musn't."  
    "Doctor-- I'm sorry--" Jamie began.  
    "Dear Jamie," the Doctor said and turned to him, "you are my dearest friend. But I'm not a human and I can't take a beloved. No, not anymore."  
    "A beloved?" Jamie cried, startled. "I... I wouldn't want ye to! Well... we were just havin' fun..."  
    "Jamie."      
    That precious voice again, telling him he had made a horrible mistake, misjudged his infinity. Those huge sad eyes that Jamie thought he could fall into once more and never come back again, like cruel Salamander falling endlessly in the Time Vortex.  Jamie felt his own eyes fill up with mortified tears.       
    The Doctor saw his pain and took a step forward,  his hands for once poised and assertive. "I am afraid I may fall in love with you. I cannot do that. I cannot get that close. Not ever again."  
         Jamie was anguished. "Doctor, I do care about ye! I love ye and...and don't ye love me too? And Zoe? And Victoria? And... and...?"  
    This time the Doctor's eyes filled with tears. "Oh, Jamie, don't misunderstand me. I so love you. I would crush a planet to protect you. But I cannot love you in that way."  
    "Oh, ye mean the kissin' part?" Jamie laughed, relieved. "That was just fun, Doctor. We don't have to do it again."  
    He saw the Doctor look away, and centuries seemed to flit before those wonderful eyes.  
    Jamie was very careful then. "Doctor, I know ye had a family. And ye must have had other 'beloveds', as ye call 'em, and I'm sorry that thinkin' about 'em makes you sad."  
    "Yes, " sighed the Doctor. "My very first 'beloved' in particular." Jamie saw him struggle to even bring this mysterious creature to the surface of his memory. "You see, it had begun just like this. A beautiful day, so peaceful, so full of bliss. I was not on my guard then and I was very, very young." He looked around himself then and fixed on where they had so joyfully been lying only a short while ago. "And there were silver trees there as well..."  
    "Was this your other body?" asked Jamie, trying to get his head around the impossible idea that his lovely little dark elf had looked completely different, had been an old white-haired man. Polly and Ben had traveled with this apparition, and he still could hardly believe it was true.  
    "Yes. My original, first self, before I transformed. It was when that body was itself very young, when I was far, far too young. " He paused, looking ashamed.  "I... I was in love, y'see." The Doctor prevented himself from wringing his hands once more by sinking them deeply into his voluminous pockets. "And he changed, this person I loved. He became quite different, quite unlike the one I had come to respect, to cherish and adore. He became a shadow of himself, if you must know. Like a darker version... of me."  
    He looked very troubled then, and a ponderous hand escaped one of his pockets and rubbed at his chin. "I wonder what's become of him. Where he went, if I'll ever... No. No, no. Let him sleep in my past where he belongs. I shan't even consider a universe in which we meet again. " He turned to face the young Scot, his eyes huge now, full and pleading. "Forgive me, Jamie. I seem to corrupt all those I fall in love with. I don't want to do that to you, my dear one."  
    A tear slid down one craggy cheek as he kneaded his hands together, unable to control their shaking.  
    "Oh, Doctor," Jamie protested with a huff. "Ye are the best, kindest chappie. How could ye ever do that to someone? Ever?"  
    "I did once, " sighed the Doctor.  
    "Well, it  just sounds like he was a bad apple to begin with!" He walked up to his friend and held out his hand to him. "Let's get out of this place that has made ye feel all sad. That can't be a good thing anymore. Let's go back to the TARDIS."  
    "Yes. Yes, perhaps that's best..."           
    The Doctor slowly reached out to take Jamie's hand but instead pulled the young man into a crushing embrace. "Thank you." It was the ghost of a whisper against his shoulder, where the Doctor was resting his head. "I have the strangest sense of foreboding. As if the universe wants to tear us apart and erase our friendship from all infinity."  
    Jamie stroked his friend's thick hair. "That will never happen. I just won't let the villains take ye from me. I'll give them a fight to remember for ye."  
    Pressed against Jamie's solid form and held protectively in the the young man's arms, the Doctor glanced back at the beautiful little planet they would soon be leaving behind. The singing winged reptiles, the blossoms, the lavender sun. A chill shook him when he looked at the tree he and Jamie had been reclining beneath. Through his tears, for a moment, the silver tree looked almost like a tall slender man with silver hair.  
    He squinted. The specter stood there elegantly for a moment more and then became a tree again.  
    "You'll be me, won't you?" he murmured to it.  
    "What was that, Doctor?" Jamie asked, pulling back to look his friend in the eyes again.  
    The Doctor smiled shyly. "Nothing. " He blushed. "Nothing. Come along, Jamie."  
    Hand-in-hand, they went back into the patient TARDIS.  
    "No," the Doctor was saying cheerily, "no chance at all of ever running into that  'bad apple' ever again. There's all of time and space and he'd never, ever be able to find me. He'd have a much better chance of finding an octopus-monster."  
       "Oh, aye? And are there such things, Doctor?"  
    "Of course. They eat the giant jellyfish."  
           


End file.
